Special Projects

Artifact Details

Title

Catalog Number

102658217

Type

Text

Date

2008-01-31

Contributor

Gardner, Tom, Interviewer

Gordon, Dave, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

52 p.

Description

This series of interviews with Dave Gordon explores the transformation of mainframe disk storage subsystems from collections of Single Large Expensive Disk drives (SLEDs) into subsystems based in Redundant Arrays of Independent Disk drives (RAID).

In 1987 Dave founded and led Array Technology, one of the earliest and leading developers and manufacturers of RAID subsystems at the time when storage subsystems were transformed from collections of SLEDs into subsystems presenting multiple virtual disks mapped onto redundant arrays of physical disks (RAID). Started in Dave's home, Array Technology was acquired by Seagate Technology, spun out and then successively a part of Tandem Computers (in turn acquired by Compaq and then HP) and finally EMC. The patents issued to Array Technology, now owned by EMC, are frequently cited as art in disk subsystems patents.

Dave began his engineer career in subsystems at Memorex in 1970, ultimately becoming its Manager of Control Unit Engineering, responsible for attachment of Memorex disk subsystems to IBM channels. Beginning 1980 he worked on optical storage subsystems first at Exxon's Star and then at ibis systems. In 1986, Dave and his colleagues formed Vite, the precursor to Array technology.

Dave has BS in Business Administration from the University of San Francisco.